In the article “Russia's hybrid war puts Europe to the test” published on Tuesday, the Financial Times reported that, in the opinion of some Western intelligence agencies, Russian hybrid activities are a strategic and planned long-term escalation.
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FT also recalled that at the beginning of December, Admiral Guiseppe Cavo Dragone, chairman of the NATO Military Committee, admitted in an interview with this daily that the committee had begun to consider “preventive military strikes” to stop further escalation from Russia. This could lead to a potential full-scale war with NATO.
– How to achieve deterrence – through retaliation, through a pre-emptive strike – is something we need to analyze thoroughly, because there may be even greater pressure on it in the future – said Dragone, quoted by FT.
It is not known what pre-emptive strikes could be considered. According to Dr. Aleksander Olech, editor-in-chief of Defence24 and a lecturer at the Baltic Defense College, who spoke to PAP, it could be about strikes on the Königsberg Oblast, Russian ports overlooking the Baltic Sea and Saint Petersburg.
– I estimate that there is no chance for us to strike the Russian Federation pre-emptively – said the expert, and, as he added, NATO could only decide on such actions if a strictly military threat appeared. Otherwise, the Alliance would put itself in the position of the aggressor.
The PAP interlocutor also pointed out that such information is released to the media as a scare to show that the Alliance, firstly, has the ability to strike, and secondly, it has recognized goals.
— It is not the case that if the Russian Federation entered a certain level of aggression, NATO would wonder where to strike in response. The alliance has carefully mapped all Russian military bases, ammunition depots and nuclear weapons storage sites. NATO simply does not want to reach this level of aggression, which is evident from the Americans' negotiations, Olech emphasized.
The expert also listed four, in his opinion, effective forms of response to Russia's hybrid attacks, which, however, do not constitute a pre-emptive military strike.
— First of all, many NATO countries have great cyber troops. Their offensive capabilities can be used in cyberspace. Secondly, let's give the Ukrainians what they need to attack Russian infrastructure. Thirdly, let us give maximum sanctions to countries that supply Russia with weapons or support it in other ways. Fourth, let's militarize the Baltic Sea and the eastern flank. If the Russians see that we are acting decisively there and that we have a lot of troops there, they will be afraid, Olech said.
Citing the head of one of the intelligence agencies, the FT also reported on Tuesday that Russian agents are inspecting road bridges and railway lines across Europe, probably with the intention of mining them. The daily points out that Russia's aggressive attitude in the last decade has led to mass expulsions of Russian intelligence agents acting as diplomats, and this has hit the GRU (Russian military intelligence) particularly hard. As a result, the new rank and file of Russian terror became the so-called proxies, i.e. easily replaceable “disposable agents”, people previously unrelated to intelligence, recruited online, acting for financial reasons, often criminals.
A representative of the intelligence agency told the FT that Moscow's actions are viewed through the prism of a secret NATO report from 2023, which stated that Russia is preparing for a possible war with Europe in a few years. He added that for border states such as Poland, Russian sabotage has become as serious a threat to the civilian population as Islamic terrorism, which has been the main problem of intelligence agencies in Europe for two decades.
Keir Giles, an expert in the Russia and Eurasia program at the British think tank Chatham House, quoted by the FT, said that the acts of sabotage we learn about are “just the tip of the iceberg, because there are many things that governments have decided not to talk about.” He also assessed that if such actions are dismissed as a “hybrid war” and contented with harsh words, Russia will continue to do the same.
